After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Vocational guide Jeff Compton-Nelson speaks with Josh about his role in supporting seminary students to discern who they are and how they will live into the life God is giving them. He also shares his personal vocational journey, which has brought surprises and gifts. Developing a concept map of calling, they explore the universal callings of all people, the relationship between vocation and career, ordained ministry and chaplaincy, the vocation of art and writing and the importance of community and renewing the mind in discerning God's will. Below's highlight from today's Forecast has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. On being really bad at predicting the future If you were to talk to Angela, my wife, she might say I've been in a vocational crisis for several years. There is an ironic fittingness to my being in this role. In some part, it makes sense having someone in this role who's had their own prolonged vocational crisis -- what do I do? Where am I supposed to be? More downs than ups, a lot of closed doors along the way. I sort of laugh at myself. Who would've thought that the vocational crisis that I'm currently in that prompted me to try workshops on how to get jobs or these training sessions on coaching and discerning vision and strategy for your life -- what you're about at your core -- who would've thought that the crisis that brought around the desire to participate in these trainings and workshops was itself the training of guiding students through it as well?... When I grew up, my sense of vocation was that I had my life plan worked out -- this is what I'll be doing each decade of my life. As it turns out, I'm really bad at predicting the future. None of that has worked out, but it's always been a gift. I began to see the vocational journey as: you work towards some goal, some current vision of what it looks like to inhabit your vocation as Christians. At some point, the path will turn, or there will be a new path that comes along the path you're on that brings a new way. So work towards a goal, but also with the openness that the odds are that it's going to be something else, and that's OK. Jeff Compton-Nelson is the Assistant Director of Field Education and Vocational Formation at Duke Divinity School, North Carolina. An ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene, Jeff is married, and they have two children. Jeff welcomes feedback; his email address is jnelson@div.duke.edu.
Below are the books mentioned in this episode: A Ray of Darkness by Rowan Williams Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer Live for a Change by Francis DeWar Josh Seligman is the founding editor of Foreshadow and a co-host of Forecast. Consider thanking our contributors by leaving a comment, sharing this post or buying them a book.
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After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Farm manager Sarah DePhillips speaks with Will about sharing the good news of Jesus through sustainable farming. Through Sarah's work supporting young people in Virginia and farmers in Zimbabwe, she embodies her message that God has given us everything we need to flourish, and our task is to steward our resources well, whether they are material, such as soil and water, or immaterial, such as our relationships with people, our gifts and our good passions. Below's highlights from today's Forecast has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. Who we are and what we do I tend to think of calling more as who God has called us to be. I think about two senses: one in a general sense: God has given us his word and the life of Jesus to look at, and he's called us to conform to the image of Jesus. Every Christian, every human, I think, God desires to know him and to become more like him in our character. And in a specific sense, he's given each and everyone of us different talents, different passions. So our calling is to become more like God and to know him more, and then specifically to live out the gifts and passions he's given us. That really gets to the 'who'. Whereas vocation I think more of as what we do: what we do with our day, what we do with our time. That might be a job we go to work and get paid for, that might be caring for children or an elderly parent -- there's lots of things that come into vocation. Caring for a garden. I think of the calling as 'who' and vocation as 'what'. You have what you need One of the neat things about going back to the basics of agriculture in a society that is totally dependent is that they do things a lot more in the way they were done in the Bible. They have more of this agrarian society outlook in that life is built around the rhythms of rain, drought, planting and harvest. We have given them a lot of bad agricultural practices in the West, and some of the Foundations for Farming teaching that we do is trying to undo some of that, but I think the coolest thing is the message that they have what they need to practise agriculture in a way that is also worshipful...You already have what you need, you just have to steward it well, is the message. And that message brings so much joy because we've encountered this concept that we don't have what we need -- the West has messed things up, and we need the West to give us technology or whatever it is -- and the message is, no, you have what you need, and God has given you what you need, and you honour God by stewarding your resources well and by telling your neighbours about the gospel and why you're farming this way. Sarah DePhillips is a farm manager with Hope for Suffolk, a ministry that serves and empowers young people in Suffolk, Virginia, through agricultural work (learn more here). She also works with Foundations for Farming, a stewardship programme for farmers in Zimbabwe (learn more here).
Will Shine is a co-host of Forecast. Consider thanking our contributors by leaving a comment, sharing this post or buying them a book. After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Piano technician Jarel Paguio speaks with Will and Josh about tuning pianos and being a new dad. For Jarel, piano tuning is about more than just the piano, as central as that is; it's about the quality of his relationships and interactions with his clients. In the words of his mentor, 'It's all relational.' Just as Jarel and his wife seek to create a harmonious home for their newborn, to a smaller degree Jarel seeks to establish an atmosphere of trust and harmony with his clients. Below's highlight from today's Forecast has been lightly edited for clarity and concision. In one of [Professor Dan Nelson's] classes, one student was having a dilemma about what they wanted to do with their life, wrestling with what God wanted them to do with their life. And Dan ultimately said that he didn't think that God really cared about where you live, what you do, who you marry, any of those things we get wrapped in, the specifics, as long as we love God and others...Because I think that is what we get wrapped up in, this notion of calling. It's this big thing: what am I called to do? I immediately jump to pictures of travelling the world -- 'serving the nations' -- and these really grand things...But I see our calling in the small, day-to-day things that we get to do. To learn more about Jarel's piano services, visit here.
Will and Josh are co-hosts of Forecast. Consider thanking our contributors by leaving a comment, sharing this post or buying them a book. Forecast (Ep 27): Because God First Loved Us: Thomas Merton and the Vocation of Writing (Part 4)9/5/2022 After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. In Chapter 4 of Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing edited by Robert Inchausti, Thomas Merton reflects on the work of contemporary writers. For him, a mark of good writing is having something worth saying, which comes from writing for God. One aspect of this approach is being inwardly transformed so that we write out of our experience of the life God gives us. At the heart of things, the Christian who writes must first know that they are loved by God. This episode includes a poem written and read by Foreshadow contributor Matthew J. Andrews. Josh is the editor of Foreshadow.
After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Jon Seligman speaks with Josh about how teaching primary/elementary music, at its best, brings 'cosmos out of chaos', to quote author Madeleine L'Engle. Jon finds purpose and hope in helping students to find their voices and become self-confident through music. Jon's Christian faith and work are inseparable. He also explains how other areas of his life, such as volunteer worship leading and taking photographs as a hobby, can similarly bring cosmos out of chaos. Jon Seligman is a primary music teacher in Chula Vista, California. You can listen to his podcast on music education advocacy here. Josh Seligman is a co-host of Forecast. Other Forecasts with Jon:
- Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Ep 2, March 2021) - Singing Tomorrow's Song (Ep 13, August 2021) After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Ryan Weiss speaks with Will about how he prioritises his responsibilities and callings, whether as a professor, a parent, a husband, a musician, a worship leader or a researcher. Each of his roles gives him the opportunity to connect with and nurture others. Looking back on his life, he observes how openings have forced him to ask who he really is and what he really wants to do, forming a path that has become his identity. He also describes how his faith in God and his work in science complement each other. This episode features music by Ryan's former band Tularosa. Below are highlights from today's Forecast. They have been lightly edited for clarity and concision. Different expressions The big scientists that I look up to have these other sides to them, whether they're artists or musicians or anything. I think it actually does play a yin/yang kind of thing. You're using both parts of your brain. Creativity is a huge part of science....I've always wanted to play music, but it's been in different expressions. Worship is a way to be involved in a church and really plug in and form relationships with people that I really care about and be encouraged by people in those environments and also connect to God.... Different responsibilities come and go and float to the top, and you have to take hold of that. I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to figure that out. Being a dad and a husband is the most important thing out of everything...How do you prioritise or balance it all but also still feel fulfilled and still feel like you're doing what you're called to do? Wearing different hats In terms of being fulfilled, I'm very lucky that i have a lot of things that do that every single day. A small example is coming home from work and hearing my daughter being like, 'Daddy!', and she comes down. She's only two years old, so I've only had two years of my life that I've had that. Talk about fulfilling, that's awesome just to be able to feel her happiness and see the whole family together. That's a small thing that happens daily that's very life-breathing. That's one hat that I love to wear, a new hat that I'm wearing. Also being a husband and figuring out how to be a parent with my wife....Stepping into these collaborations. That's at home, and then at work, I have a laboratory where we collaborate with a private foundation to discover a cure for this rare genetic disease....There's about one in 50,000 kids who are born with it, and they get these bone tumours that are really painful....So our passion in the lab is to try to identify a novel drug to help them. So that's something I'm really passionate about. That's a daily drive, but something that really compels me in science is not only discovering things, but can we find things that can actually help people tangibly? Called to enable others I've always enjoyed teaching a lot, and I get a lot of opportunities to do that throughout my career. As I started doing it, I realised that I really loved it and felt like I was called to do it, to enable people to find their calling or making something feel attainable to people. Even If I don't feel called to be a medical doctor, how do I enable people or encourage people to reach out to those things that they never imagined?....Just being able to impart that on younger people has always felt like something I enjoy doing....Even if I'm not the best or most successful scientist who discovers something that changes the world -- obviously that's a passion as well -- but how I approach it now is, can enable the trainees in my lab to go on to do great things? Opportunities A lot of things that happen in life, at least in my life -- it's like these little doors crack open, and they're like, 'Hey, here's this opportunity'. So maybe the inquisitiveness comes into that too. Looking back, these different decisions that I've made throughout life have presented themselves without even thinking that they would present themselves to me, but stepping into that with faith or with inquisitiveness has been a major blessing. It's pushed me to new places that I had never thought possible. Somehow, now I'm a professor when I was thinking about dropping out of grad school eight years ago with the band stuff. But then things happened in life at that time that really pulled the rug out, and I said, 'What do you really want to do?' and 'Who really are you?'....All you can do is make some decision and just do your best with that. Dr. Ryan Weiss is a professor in the biochemistry and molecular biology department of the University of Georgia. He is also a musician, a dad and a husband. You can learn more about his lab here.
Will Shine is a co-host of Forecast. After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Author and speaker Alina Sayre speaks with Josh about the intersection between her Christian faith and her writing. Although at one point, she wondered if creative writing distracted her from pursuing God, she now believes that God has given it to her as a gift to use and develop in various forms. Alina also describes her experience as a theopoetics student and then reads and discusses her new poem 'Sleepwalker', which is forthcoming on Foreshadow. Below are excerpts from today's Forecast. They have been lightly edited for clarity and concision. Loving God through writing I started my writing career by chewing on books. I was really interested in books from a very young age. I loved to read. It wasn't until late elementary school that I started getting interested in writing, as I started to realise how much power stories have to shape the way we think and the way we feel.... I was growing up in an evangelical church at the time, and I had a lot of trouble reconciling the idea that I might be gifted as writer -- I didn't have the language for it at the time -- even being called in a vocational sense as a writer. I had this limited theology that vocation meant being a pastor or being a missionary, and if God hadn't called me to an explicitly religious career, then writing certainly didn't count in some way. I actually wondered, could writing be a distraction from God or some form of idolatry that I was putting in front of God? It wasn't until high school that I started to come to grips with the idea that vocation could be more than a religious career...God had put this desire in me to write, this gift, and to follow it was the best thing I could do to follow God and honour him.... I think a lot of our theology comes from life experience, at least on some deep level, whether we admit it or not. I had this deep love of writing -- I couldn't deny that -- and also a deep love of God, and to try to reconcile those two things, I had to believe they either don't go together, and God created me with a gift that he doesn't want me to use -- which brings up terrible questions about the goodness and wisdom of such a God, which even in my adolescent years, I was unable to reconcile with what I saw as a good and positive gift -- or God had put that in me to do something with. I did draw inspiration from others who had followed, lives that weren't missionaries or pastors and who had done a lot of good with that...well known Christians who were authors. I guess I followed a similar pattern with a number of other theological queries over the years. Even in the tradition I was raised with, women were not allowed to have speaking parts in worship. I was raised to believe that as gospel truth, and it wasn't until later in life that I began to similarly ask, why would God give me a gift that involves words -- not that I love to be in stage in front of people -- but I do have things to say, and why would God have given me that without wanting me to use that? A calling vs a hobby I separate a vocation-based passion from a hobby in that a hobby is something you enjoy until it takes work. For instance, I really enjoy photography, but I never see myself becoming more than an amateur because if I were really to put in the labour required to become professional, it would no longer be fun anymore...writing for me is something I am still passionate about after I've put in the work. On mentors I would never have written any of the things that I have written without the input of so many mentors throughout the years. As an adolescent, I did speech and debate as my extracurricular. My speech coach at the time encouraged me to lean into the events where I would write my own material. She saw a spark in me and challenged me to go after that, and I think that encouraged me to take it a little more seriously and explore that. As a teen, you're figuring out who you are and what you're good at, and that was a good indicator for me.... As a teen, especially as I was sorting through this notion of being gifted at something that was not traditionally a religious path, I found myself returning to [The Lord of the Rings] as a model. Knowing that [J.R.R.] Tolkien had a Christian faith, who never to my knowledge wrote about it explicitly, I found myself spiritually encouraged and guided by the story of Frodo and the Rings of Power, this motif of the quest, the sacrifice that goes into this overarching mission, the friends who keep them going and the people who, long before him, paved the way for him to accomplish this quest. I asked myself, if I could be so spiritually encouraged and guided by this story that has little to no explicitly religious material in it, who's to say that my calling couldn't be something similar: to write something that comes out of me as a person of faith, whether or not that material is explicitly religious? I was inspired by Tolkien's faith stamping itself upon his writing without being didactic or in your face. Seeking God in different situations I find a lot of the time what I'm trying to do is learning to see God in different situations. I spend part of my time teaching and tutoring, and sometimes the students are frustrating and hilarious at other times, and I think learning to interact with them definitely challenges me to see God in all sorts of different people, especially people who try my patience and just force me to look at the world in different ways. They're hilarious little people, and that challenges me and makes me laugh. And I think sometimes the very mundane things also challenge me to be present in the act of loving God. I really love Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World, as she focuses on just the very physical, ordinary things as paths to appreciating and spending time with God. I just made a big move, and I'm spending a lot of time breaking down boxes and washing dishes, and I think that is an interesting way to view those tasks as a way not just to glorify God by doing them excellently, though I try to, but to use that as time to be with God and just be conscious and aware of God's presence in the moment as I'm breaking down another box. Alina Sayre is the award-winning author of five books and a graduate student of theopoetics at Bethany Theological Seminary. You can learn more about her work here. You can also read her poem 'Keeping Vigil', recently published on Foreshadow, here.
Josh Seligman is the founding editor of Foreshadow and a co-host of Forecast. After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Musician and vocational mentor Julius Obregon, Jr., speaks with Will about parallels between musicianship and the spiritual journey. For Julius, vocation involves all of our lives and is driven by love. Just because one is called doesn't mean automatic arrival at one's destination; excellence requires discipline and learning from others. Our longings shape us, Julius says, and we are called to conform our longings to their divine source. This episode includes a clip of Julius' music. Below are excerpts from today's Forecast. They have been lightly edited for clarity and concision. What we do in our daily life I had to really do a lot of work to connect a lot of that heady stuff to things like my heart and my body and what I do with my every day. What we love about the monastics is that they understand the integration between all of those parts. The focus on daily habits is an important part of embodying our vocation because we understand vocation to be more than being defined by those few and far between, grandiose moments when we might display character, or those heroic moments. Our character and vocation are best displayed and embodied in what we do in our every day life. The things that are habitual to us. The every day, small decisions that we make. My love of the thing itself The pursuit of vocation is that back and forth between the 'whoa' transcendence and the working it out in the immanent. And I love how you're connecting it to my guitar playing because I think my participation in music as a craft has resourced me a lot in understanding what discipleship is. I discovered such a deep love and curiosity for this thing. That's what fuelled my discipline...I do attribute a lot of my growth to my love of the thing itself. I need to learn under someone else I started by myself, and then I reached a certain point where I was like, there's so many things that I don't know, that I don't think I can take myself to, so I sought out a teacher. This is exactly an analogue of what my spiritual life is like, of following this longing and then getting to a point of where I can only go so far by myself. I need to learn under someone else who is maybe more initiated in this way, or who can help me know what kinds of questions I need to ask...It was a back and forth of me being given something and then me working it out to my limits until I was like, 'Help me.' But I think it was being around somebody who've had more time and communion with this thing called music, or this craft...Being with my teachers was important because it was an embodied way for me to observe and take in what it looks like to be further along in knowing and participating in this thing. Muscle memory In college, I was finding more and more of a disconnect: I don't think I can tap into, if high school was me running off the juices of the big transcendent experiences, those big emotional things aren't happening to me anymore. But liturgy is this thing that grounds you. I can always practise my scales. Sometimes it'll click and it'll help me, and sometimes it'll feel rote, but it keeps me tethered to this thing, and it's growing muscle memory in me. That's what liturgy and spiritual practices do...In monasteries, they gather together for morning prayer every day. And then that catapults them into the rest of their day, and they do their stuff, and they come back together for midday prayer. And that's not always feasible given our different schedules, but at the very least, [they're] coming together. There are many moments when I would show up to morning prayer, and I would feel like I wasn't getting anything from the scriptures, but to have words that I was able to pray, and to be able to lean upon that when I didn't have any language to offer up myself was kind of like scales. I don't have anything, I don't have anything to write, but I know that playing these things is...forming something good in me. Conforming but not erasing desire We are first and foremost loving creatures. Our daily habits and, broader than that, the cultural liturgies we participate in, are shaping what we desire. Desire does so much to move us. It's a primary driving factor to why we do what we do...It does take discernment [to figure out] where my deep longing meets the world's deep need...I think there's something of God in my desire to play music and write and tell stories. Whatever eternity looks like, it's communion with God here and after...I think it's like tuning a poorly tuned guitar. There's something beautiful in what music connects me to, but that longing can also take me to places where I'm inflicting violence on people because primarily what's driving me is a desire for myself. So I think there is some refining that happens. My desire for drawing out beauty and telling stories and playing music -- there is something good and true and beautiful in that, and there are ways that that can be expressed and malformed. In some ways, there is a conformity that happens, but it doesn't erase my particularity. After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. Josh and Will introduce the theme of Forecast Season 2, 'Called Forth: Vocation and Faith'. They describe how their experiences have shaped their understanding of vocation, outlining three dimensions of vocation: the universal, the personal and the overlap between the two. Then they discuss the key terms, particularly 'discernment', and give a brief outline of the year to come. In this episode, Will refers to the book God Hides in Plain Sight by Dean Nelson, a Foreshadow contributor. You can find his book here. Josh Seligman is the founding editor of Foreshadow. He and Will Shine are co-hosts of Forecast.
After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the podcast to load. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Podomatic, Player FM and Deezer. Listen to other Forecasts here. This Forecast is a mixtape of music by the podcast's co-hosts, some of which has been featured in clips in previous episodes, and some of which is new. Outline of today's Forecast
'Now Your Love Satisfies Me' by Josh Seligman Based on the Gerasene man from whom Jesus cast out an army of demons In the morning, I used to fear The strangers I had seen in my dreams They'd pin me down and change my name But now those voices never make a sound In the morning, I used to hide From the people who used to hide from me I'd bruise my face to try to get away But now I'm so glad to be around In the morning, now I sing In the morning, I used to cry That toil and trouble would follow all my days I'd break my chains, they'd clamp again But now they are nowhere to be found In the morning, I used to climb The hillside to jump into the sea But then I found you, when you found me And now I am sitting on the ground Now your love satisfies And when you asked my name, I couldn't say But when you come again, I'll find a better place Where you can stay In the morning, now I sing To tell of all the good God's done for me And if you hear me sing my song And if you know the words, then sing along In the morning, now I sing That now your love satisfies 'Cause now your love satisfies me. Josh Seligman is the founding editor of Foreshadow and a co-host of its podcast, Forecast.
Will Shine is a co-host of Forecast. |
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